Synopses & Reviews
DESCRIPTION (longer copy)Lee Bontecou became widely known early in the 1960s for her welded steel sculptures into which various fabrics, metals, and found objects were incorporated. By the mid-1960s she began to experiment with plastics, epoxy, and other synthetic materials to create molded rather than assembled forms. As her work evolved, it increasingly made reference to naturalistic phenomena, evoking biological life--an interest that was also manifest in her earliest cast sculptures of birds and animals. By the beginning of the 1970s, Bontecou was fully engaged in creating a body of work in which plant and animal forms, recognizable yet menacingly transformed, became dominant imagery. Following a period during which Bontecou ceased to make sculpture while teaching and concentrating on drawing, she has recently returned to three-dimensional form. The body of work in which she is now actively engaged demonstrates a consistency of vision with that of her earlier production, yet has evolved in a direction that continues to be fresh and exciting, demonstrating a kinship with the concerns of many younger artists. Throughout this entire period, she has continued to make drawings that resonate powerfully with the ideas and images expressed in her sculpture. Incorporating a variety of figurative, organic, and mechanistic references yet predominantly abstract, her sculpture and drawing suggest various states of transformation and transmutation between the natural and the man-made, order and chaos, delicacy and ferocity. This monograph is the first major survey of her work to be published and will provide an extraordinary opportunity to reevaluate the career of an artist who has become alegendary figure in the art world due to the powerful impact of her early work and the relevance and interest this work still has for many younger artists.
Synopsis
One of the leading female artists of the late 20th century. Lee Bontecou (b. 1931) became widely known for her welded steel sculptures and plastic and epoxy molded assemblages from the 1960s and 1970s. Her powerful and original constructions, which were both critically acclaimed and actively collected, evoked natural phenomena and organic biological life even as they grew more abstract. This monograph--the first extensive analysis of her art--presents some 50 sculptures and more than 100 drawings, including her celebrated early works as well as later pieces that are little known and have never been publicly exhibited or published. Along with four original essays, this volume also includes a reprint of Donald Judd's influential 1965 Arts Magazine article on Bontecou. At last, through this major survey of her work--which accompanies an exhibition organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and ULCA Hammer Museum--we are able to reevaluate the career of an artist who has become legendary in the art world because of the impact of her striking early work and the enormous influence she continues to have on younger artists.
About the Author
Elizabeth A. T. Smith, James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, is the curator of this retrospective on Lee Bontecou. Robert Storr is Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University. Donna DeSalvo is senior curator at Tate Modern in London. Mona Hadler is an art historian.